Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: A Studio Life

A richly illustrated book that charts Barns-Graham’s remarkable artistic life

British artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912-2004) played a key role in the development of modern abstract art in Britain. This unrivalled publication, fully updated in 2011 to cover the artist’s final years, charts Barns-Graham’s remarkable artistic life, including discussion of her beginnings in Scotland and her long association with St Ives, the Cornish town made internationally famous by the avant-garde artists who migrated there at the outbreak of the Second World War. Arriving in Cornwall just months after the modernists Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Naum Gabo, Barns-Graham was quickly absorbed into their inner circle.

She was subsequently one of the Crypt Group of young moderns, and a founder member of the breakaway Penwith Society of Arts. Looking at Barns-Graham in the round, Lynne Green explores the importance of her Scottish identity and her bold experimentation with abstraction. Barns-Graham was working right up to her death with the energy and enthusiasm usually associated with the young; this book celebrates her considerable contribution to the history of British art.

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